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building new everything machine

R

RCflyer

Banned
i have been readin these forums alot and i need help. i got a great deal on 1 gig partiot pc 3200 ram ocz 520 and a tt tsunami. i have 700 for mobo cpu gpu hdd and os. this come willbe used for light gaming, i dont need extreme graphics, and every day use as well as video editing. so have some fun 😛 i have no idea if i should go P4 or AMD. and i need a good VERY stable system STABLE IN THE MAIN PRIORITY. thanks guys fo your time and help
 
p4 run hot and eat a lot of power, go with amd, asus makes stable (but on the pricy side) mobos that work great with amd
 
I would go with an AMD setup, runs cooler and performs better in most cases. You'll be able to get quite a nice setup for $700.
 
My take...AMD3000+Venice($153)-Asus A8Vmobo ($118)-Evga6600GT($159 w/ rebate)-Samsung80GigSATA($60)-WinXPHome($91) = $581 maybe a little over $600 with shipping. You can find all this cheaper if ya shop arnd as I just looked on the egg. Good luck.
 
Check the prices between amd and intel cpus and I think that you'll see that amd still offers more bang per buck, but intel has it's strengths. In the price range that you're describing I think that you would get a better general purpose computer if you based it on an amd platform.

Check this out.

MSI K8N Neo4-F Socket 939 NVIDIA nForce4 ATX AMD Motherboard - Retail
AMD Athlon 64 3200+ Winchester Integrated into Chip FSB 512KB L2 Cache Socket 939 Processor - Retail
POWERCOLOR R43C-TD3D/BULK Radeon X800XL 256MB 256-bit GDDR3 PCI-Express x16 Video Card - OEM
Microsoft Windows XP HOME Edition With Service Pack 2 - OEM
SAMSUNG SpinPoint P Series SP1614C 160GB 7200 RPM 8MB Cache Serial ATA150 Hard Drive - OEM

$746.92 shipped

Edit: you'll have to get the MB and processor before the 31st to get these prices. You could also drop the video card down to a 6600GT or drop the CPU down to a 3000+ to get pretty close to your $700 limit.
 
Which ever brand Mobo you decide on, go for 939 skt, it has all the upgrade potential for future AMD CPU's.
Get at least a 3200+ or higher >2GHz. Preferably the 3700 san Diego
I only spent $535 on my internal hardware, and wish I would've gone higher with CPU.
 
SlitheryDee:

Why would you suggest a Winchester? And Samsung drives are decent, but you don't need to get the cheapest thing out there, especially not for a guy who said he wanted to do video editing.

Why are you suggesting a $283 video card to a guy who made a point of saying he was doing light gaming?

He specifically mentioned video editing, but the motherboard you picked doesn't have firewire.

$46.92 over budget and it's not what he wanted. He also said he needed the OS, which is at least another $90 if he wants XP Home.
 
Originally posted by: RCflyer
i have been readin these forums alot and i need help. i got a great deal on 1 gig partiot pc 3200 ram ocz 520 and a tt tsunami. i have 700 for mobo cpu gpu hdd and os. this come willbe used for light gaming, i dont need extreme graphics, and every day use as well as video editing. so have some fun 😛 i have no idea if i should go P4 or AMD. and i need a good VERY stable system STABLE IN THE MAIN PRIORITY. thanks guys fo your time and help
Click to expand...

The OS really makes your budget a lot smaller than it looks, since XP Pro is $140. You could get XP Home for $90, but in the long run it's probably not worth it. It'll be a long time till everybody's using Longhorn, so you might as well have the better version of XP. If you see this computer as disposable (you'll be getting rid of it along with the OS in a year or two), then you'd probably want to save $50 and go with XP Home, but you'll probably upgrade the system several times and keep the same XP discs.

As far as hardware, it really depends on how much gaming you want to do. AMD is definitely the way to go since they're the fastest and the cheapest for most things, and stability hasn't been an issue for a long time. Video cards can start getting expensive really fast, so you should probably be more specific about what you mean by "light gaming."

A Socket 939 Venice CPU is probably where you want to start with that kind of budget. The 3000+ (Venice 1.8, 512K cache) is $154 and the 3200+ (Venice 2.0, 512K cache) is $198. If you want something better than that, you should probably jump all the way up to the 3700+ (San Diego 2.2, 1MB cache) for $329 because it's not much more than the Venice 2.2.

As far as motherboards, an NForce4 Ultra is what you want, and since you're doing video editing you want firewire. Here are all the boards at NewEgg that meet that. EPoX has the best deal there with their $112 board. It's a good brand and stable, and even a good overclocking board if you were into that (although it doesn't look like you are). I don't see how you'd justify paying more for the MSI or ABit boards. The EPoX board seems better (or at least good as) the more expensive ones.

The video card is the hard decision. The cards to look at are:

Radeon 9600 128MB: 4 pipelines at 325MHz, 6.4 GB/sec bandwidth = $70
GeForce 6600 128MB: 8 pipelines at 300MHz, 8.8 GB/sec bandwidth = $115
Radeon X800 128MB: 12 pipelines at 392MHz, 22.4 GB/sec bandwidth = $190
Radeon X800XL 256MB: 16 pipelines at 400MHz, 31.4 GB/sec bandwidth = $280
Radeon X850XT 256MB: 16 pipelines at 520MHz, 34.56 GB/sec bandwidth = $450

Those are all good DX9 cards and they can all play about anything as far as "light gaming" is concerned. I've played FarCry and Doom 3 on the Radeon 9600 and it's perfectly playable in 1024x768 if you don't have the settings maxed out. The $190 X800 is the best bang for the buck right now. It just depends if you're going to be playing enough games for that to be much more useful than the GeForce 6600. I'd be sticking to the $115 GeForce 6600 or the $190 Radeon X800 in your price range, though.

The Radeon 9600 and GeForce 6600 are also passive cards which makes the system quieter.

The hard drive can be another difficult choice. If you're going to be doing video editing, that's one of the few times when a RAID could actually help because of the higher sequential transfer rate. Higher plater density also gives you higher max transfer rates, so you might want to consider a newer 133 GB/platter drive like the Seagate Barracuda 7200.8 line instead of a regular 80 GB/platter model. The top of the line (and also the drives with 5-year warranties) are the WD Raptor 74, the Seagate Barracuda and the Maxtor MaxLine III. Go to StorageReview.com for a much more in-depth breakdown of performance.

Here are a few different ideas to get you going.



CPU: AMD Athlon 64 3000+ Retail $153.99 (newegg)
mainboard: EPoX EP-9NPA+Ultra $105 (ChiefValue)
video: Sapphire Radeon X800 128MB $189 (newegg)
HDD: Seagate 160GB SATA 7200.7 $89.99 (ZipZoomFly)
OS: Microsoft Windows XP Pro SP2 $133.99 (ZipZoomFly)

$671.97 delivered

That's a good place to start. You're getting the really good video card, but you might want more hard drive space if you're doing a lot of video editing. This is the best gaming choice.



CPU: AMD Athlon 64 3200+ Retail $198 (ZipZoomFly)
mainboard: EPoX EP-9NPA+Ultra $105 (ChiefValue)
video: GigaByte GeForce 6600 128MB $113.99 (ZipZoomFly)
HDD: Seagate 250GB SATA 7200.8 $133.95 (ChiefValue)
OS: Microsoft Windows XP Pro SP2 $133.99 (ZipZoomFly)

$684.93 delivered

Here's a faster CPU and bigger hard drive (that's also 133 GB/platter), which would be a better system since you're not a hardcore gamer. This is probably the most balanced option.



CPU: AMD Athlon 64 3000+ Retail $153.99 (newegg)
mainboard: EPoX EP-9NPA+Ultra $105 (ChiefValue)
video: GigaByte GeForce 6600 128MB $113.99 (ZipZoomFly)
HDD: Seagate 160GB SATA 7200.7 $89.99 (ZipZoomFly)
HDD: Seagate 160GB SATA 7200.7 $89.99 (ZipZoomFly)
OS: Microsoft Windows XP Pro SP2 $133.99 (ZipZoomFly)

$686.95 delivered

And here you're going for the SATA RAID, which would be the best video editing system. You'd also need a floppy drive to install the SATA RAID drivers.
 
Thanks for the replys. I play CS 1.6 and diablo 2 hence light gaming. I have never seen that epox board so i will take a look at it. all i have seen if "DFI is the best" tpye builds. i like the 250gb option and i really would like the 3200. im keeping my cd/dvd roms and floppy so i have those. im not very interested in RAID sense i dont know waht it is at all. i will take closer look at all of your sugestions. thanks for the input.
 
Originally posted by: Tostada
SlitheryDee:

Why would you suggest a Winchester? And Samsung drives are decent, but you don't need to get the cheapest thing out there, especially not for a guy who said he wanted to do video editing.

Why are you suggesting a $283 video card to a guy who made a point of saying he was doing light gaming?

He specifically mentioned video editing, but the motherboard you picked doesn't have firewire.

$46.92 over budget and it's not what he wanted. He also said he needed the OS, which is at least another $90 if he wants XP Home.
Click to expand...


1. You're right, venice isn't isn't significantly more expensive than winchester, but since there's practically no difference in performance I recommended the winchester to shave off the ~10 bucks between the two 3200+ cores.

2. The video card I suggested simply because it's what "I" think is the current best bang for the buck card. Although admittedly CS 1.6 and diablo 2 wouldn't need half of that processing power.

3. I'm not into video editing, and I was unaware that a forewire port would be desirable. Out of curiosity, how does the firewire port apply to video editing?

4. I included windows XP home in my list and price.

Ultimately, the point of my post was to demonstrate that you could get a very nice system
for around what his budget is. I also made a couple of suggestions afterward that would have easily brought the proposed system below his stated budget. Your suggestions were also quite good, and all of our suggestions should be seen as guidelines rather than taken part and parcel.

 
Fire wire has a much faster transfer speed then usb2.0. usb can max out higher but fire wire adverages higher. thanks you very much for the info.
 
Originally posted by: SlitheryDee
3. I'm not into video editing, and I was unaware that a forewire port would be desirable. Out of curiosity, how does the firewire port apply to video editing?
Click to expand...

DV equipment pretty much all uses firewire. It's kinda like a high-speed USB port that's a little better.

4. I included windows XP home in my list and price.
Click to expand...

Oops! And sorry for being so rude ... I had just responded to some complete imbeciles in another thread and kinda let my "sarcasting dick" mood carry over. 🙂

 
how does this setup sound?

dfi ultra-d(has an onbord f6pin firewire plug and ive read ver stable)
3200 venice
6600gt
160gb seagate
OS

coune to be about $720 waht do you think of that?
 
Looks fine, but for video editing you might be better off with Intel, they don't do well for gaming, compared to AMD, but they're good for heavy multitasking and win in video editing. I'd recommend the Pentium 4 630 processor. The 6XX series run a lot cooler than their other prescotts. In fact, the heat output is on par with AMD, if not slightly hotter.
 
Watch out though, be sure the mobo you have supports the RAM you bought -> Intels now use DDR2 (the new type of memory, as opposed to DDR). Be sure you read around.
 
that is one of the rasons im going with amd, i bought batriot ream 2-3-2-5 for my new comp and im currently using in my comp right now. im going to transfer taht over.
 
Originally posted by: RCflyer
how does this setup sound?

dfi ultra-d(has an onbord f6pin firewire plug and ive read ver stable)
3200 venice
6600gt
160gb seagate
OS

coune to be about $720 waht do you think of that?
Click to expand...

You DON'T need a 6600GT for Diablo II and CS 1.6. Stick with a lower end card like a 6600 or maybe even a 6200. And don't get the DFI board if you're not overclocking. If you want lots of great features, get the MSI Neo-4 Platinum board.
 
if you want to save a couple $$ and get better performance than the 6600 take a look at the x700
 
What program are you going to use for video editing and how important a priority will it be for your computer?
 
ok here waht ive come up with, im going to order a monarch combo sense im not comforable with the thermal paste applyment, and i get free games.

how does this look. BTW i decided to bump my buget to closers to a 1000 and i will just work really hard this summer. im half way there.

here what im looking at.

MB/CPU combo ultra-d/3200 they didnt offer the epox board or i would take that.
$340
800xl been reading lots of article and will give me lots of room to get newer games and play at high res
$270
3520a
$50
Light on dvd-rom
$20
250gb 7200.8 seagate $139
MX510
$30
Keyboard logitec elite
$26
7 in1 floppy $25
XP home $89 i dont need pro
this totals $1031. any comment/sugestions?

remeber i have case psu and ram already

thanks guys
 
Originally posted by: RCflyer
ok here waht ive come up with, im going to order a monarch combo sense im not comforable with the thermal paste applyment, and i get free games.

how does this look. BTW i decided to bump my buget to closers to a 1000 and i will just work really hard this summer. im half way there.

here what im looking at.

MB/CPU combo ultra-d/3200 they didnt offer the epox board or i would take that.
$340
800xl been reading lots of article and will give me lots of room to get newer games and play at high res
$270
3520a
$50
Light on dvd-rom
$20
250gb 7200.8 seagate $139
MX510
$30
Keyboard logitec elite
$26
7 in1 floppy $25
XP home $89 i dont need pro
this totals $1031. any comment/sugestions?

remeber i have case psu and ram already

thanks guys
Click to expand...

you can get the 3520A for like $44 at newegg and i'd skip the dvd rom.
 
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